Looking Back to Look Ahead: Homosexuality and the Postmodern Gothic in American Literature

110 Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism quarrel with contemporary literary theory to his discussionsof Poe via, not sex-about which literary theory has not been in the least reticent-but rather death-about which it seems at least somewhat less,and possiblyquite differently,concerned than was Poe, to whom so much recent literary theory has been applied and from whom so much early literary theory says it has been derived. A murmuring of Poe’s difference in this regard has been prevalent, if sporadic, in Poe criticism from the beginning, and Freedman adds to these murmurs when he three times during the course of ThePwousSanctuary recognizesin passinga resemblance between the romantic infatuationsof Poe’s narrators and the scatologicaland misogynistsatiresof Swift [36,109,129]-a link that might make Poe’s beautiful women signifyjust idols, might make the worship of beautiful women in Poe signifyjust idolatry,and might make the rampant galloping mortality of Poe’s beautiful women signify just a vanitas death’s-head. Still, Freedman, who also twice during the course of The Porous Sanctuary in passing traces ambivalence all the way back to that primal garden scene in the first book of the Pentateuch, I am sure would not for a moment hesitate to psychoanalyze that. R. C. De Prospo Washington College Looking Back to Look Ahead:Homosexualityand the Postmodem Gothic in American Literature John W. M. Hallock. TheAmaicanByron:Homosexuality and theFall ofFztz-GreeneHalleck.Madison:Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2000. x, 226 pp. $50.00 cloth. Robert K. Martin and Eric Savoy, eds. American Gothic:NeuInteruentionsin aNational Narrative.Iowa City:Univ. of Iowa Press, 1998.xii, 265 pp. $32.95 cloth. In a postmodern culture, identity and desire collide and slip into each other, causing a melee of confusion for those seeking to define the “self.” We live in an age where the (usually male) “metrosexual,”created out of the confluence of gay/straight desire and consumer capitalism, is beginning to dominate the culture of desire,slowly rising to poke out his head without preference as to the gender or sexualityof those who desire him. He is wealthy, marketable, and willing to submit himself to the commodification that swells his pocketbook. Exemplarymetrosexualsinclude British soccer star David Beckham,Britishglam singer Robbie Williams,and Olympicgold medal winner Ian Thorpe. Given such a pansexual atmosphere in our Western cultural moment, we might expect the lib erating de-repression of pent-up desire left unarticulated and unrealized during the “dark ages” (from the end of the Greeks until . ..now?) in conceptions of human sexualityand desire.But this has not occurred. Despite the metrosexual’s appeal to all genders and sexualities, we still require knowledgeof his sexual identity-the aforementioned metrosexual exemplars have been questioned often enough about their sexual preference that they had to “out” themselves, each identifying as heterosexual. 111 The need forascriptionof sexualidentityand the collectivesighof reliefupon the discoverythat themetrosexual’smasculinitymatches (fromaconservativevantage point) his sexualpreference signalsthatperhapswe arenotasfaralongaswe might think. For despite Ian Thorpe’sdonning of haute couture, and despite Beckham’s affinityfor pink nail polish and for wearing his wife’s panties, the metrosexual remains the object of desire not because he adopts opposite-gendered signifiersbut because he remains identified as safely heterosexual .The implied effect,then, of beingouted as homosexualhasa similarresonancetodayasit did when Fitz-Creene Halleck was outed and subsequently ousted from the canon of American poetry . After all, how many celebrities, other than EltonJohn, haveretained their marketabilityafter beingouted?RememberGeorgeMichael?OrEllen Degeneres (whois recoveringdespiteher sitcom’s cancellationsoon after shewas outed)?The regulation on sexuality and on gender, even in postmodernity ,still exists:it subtly and insidiouslyencouragesthe repression of desire that appears incongruouswith expectations of gender.We must then look to our past,as doesJohn W . M. Hallock withhis biographyof Fitz-CreeneHalleck,to trace and expand notions of repression and repressive structures,asdo the editorsof AmericanGothic:N e w Interventions in a National Narrative,in an attempt to reveal and deconstructthe factorsthat contribute to these structuresaswell as their effects. In The Amen’canByron: Homosexuality and the FaU of Fztz-GreeneHahck,John Hallock (a distant relative)setsout to explain the decline of a oncecelebratednineteenthcenturyAmericanpoet .The introduction sets up his theoreticalframeworkby introducingterminology,providinga generalcontext for sexualityin nineteenthcentury America, and posing the question that fuels...